1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a device and a method for exerting a torque on an object.
2. Description of the Related Art
Current motor vehicles, such as passenger cars, are equipped as a rule with a vehicle dynamics control which in a critical driving situation, that is, for example at high wheel slip, automatically intervenes in the driving action, and initiates measures for stabilizing the vehicle. For this purpose, as a rule, braking or acceleration forces are exerted on the vehicle, for instance by specifically braking or accelerating individual wheels. Known vehicle dynamics controls are used to stabilize the vehicle, but also to bring back the vehicle from a critical driving situation to a stable driving situation.
In four-wheel vehicles, known vehicle dynamics controllers function sufficiently well in most driving situations. By contrast, in two-wheel vehicles the known vehicle dynamics controls are not in a position to stabilize the vehicle sufficiently or to bring it back from a critical driving situation to a stable driving situation. One of the reasons for this is that high torques are able to act on the motorcycle, which cannot be, or can only insufficiently be counteracted by braking or steering interventions, which is different from the case of passenger cars.
Published German patent application document DE 41 12 447 A1 describes a method for stabilizing a motorcycle using a gyroscopically acting flywheel. However, using the flywheel one is able to act only insufficiently on the two-wheel vehicle.
In addition to vehicles, other devices, such as machines having moving parts, such as drilling machines, robots, fitness machines, etc., may demonstrate operating states in which relatively high torques are acting. Such torques usually occur during the accelerating (or braking) of the device, or a part thereof, such as during the running-up of a drilling machine or during the acceleration of a robot arm. In this case, the rotational pulse of the accelerated part acts back on the entire device. This is frequently not desirable, since the reaction of the torque has an impairing effect on the functioning or operability of the device.